Jacksonville man beaten in Austria sees a purpose

Wednesday

Fame, Mike Brennan says, was meant to come on the football field. Not at the blunt end of a fist half a world away.

A Jacksonville native and graduate of Raines High, Brennan had hoped to become a celebrity like the high school teammates who went on to careers in the NFL.

Instead, the 36-year-old former linebacker has become famous on the streets of Vienna for his role in a case that made international news this week when an Austrian undercover policeman was charged with attacking Brennan in a subway station last year.

"Everywhere I go, people know me," he said by phone from Austria on Wednesday . "I've been on TV shows, in the newspapers here. People come up to me. People even come up to people I work with. It's crazy.

"But I will not complain if this results in a purpose, so that this doesn't happen to other people."

On Feb. 11, 2009, "this" took Brennan's life in a direction even stranger than the road that took him from Durkeeville to the Austrian capital.

He was on the subway, returning home from his job as a physical education, English and contemporary studies teacher at Vienna International School. About to meet his girlfriend, with whom he was talking on his cell phone, he could sense something wasn't right.

"There was activity on the train, guys moving," he said. "It just felt really weird."

Moments later, he said, it felt worse. A lot worse.

As he stepped out of the train and onto the platform, he said he was immediately hit.

"It was like a crack-back block in football," he said. "A guy hit me out of nowhere. And then he started punching me, like he was losing his mind."

Brennan said he crumpled to the platform floor and hit his head on the concrete. A second man soon joined in, he said, pummeling him as well in full view of the crowded station and his girlfriend. She tried to intervene, Brennan said, but the second man threw her to the side. Neither of the men were in police uniform.

At first, he said, "they didn't identify themselves. They were in street clothes.

"I guess you could say it was sort of like the Rodney King beating, except it was different because I didn't know who these guys were."

The King beating in 1991 led to deadly riots in Los Angeles a year later and the eventual conviction and imprisonment of two police officers on civil rights violations. Brennan's beating led to an eventual apology from Vienna police, whose undercover officers mistook him for a drug dealer who was later captured.

It also left him with two broken bones in his back, battered ribs, and head and hand injuries. He was out of work for four months.

It made him the focus of racial tensions in the Austrian capital, where the human rights organization Amnesty International reported last year that police and the justice system are plagued by racism.

"A lot of things happen to people of color here. Some of them afraid to go out," Brennan said. "I come from Jacksonville. I grew up right across from Durkeeville, and I know what racism is and what it looks like in people's faces.

"I saw that face many nights growing up. And this guy, the first guy, he had that look."

Austrian courts didn't release the name of the officer charged Tuesday in Brennan's beating and said only one was charged because there wasn't sufficient evidence against the other. If convicted, the man could face up to six months in jail.

For Brennan, a guilty verdict would help stamp the message he has been sending since that day, particularly to his students at Vienna International School, where he returned to teach after he healed. He has worked there since shortly after he came to the Europe to play professional football; earlier, he played two years in the Arena league and for several American semi-pro teams after he graduated from Park University in Missouri.

"One of the reason I've been fighting this is for these kids," he said. "I want to be an example for them, to show them that you can't let someone do this to you in life. You just can't bend over."

And as for his celebrity, he says that in an odd and unexpected way, it has been worth it if the result is something good.

"Some people say this case is so big here, like the Rosa Parks case in America," he said. "It could change how the government approaches people and how the police do their jobs.

"People come up to me on the street and tell me to keep fighting, not to stop, and that's what I'm doing. Not for me, but for everybody else."

mike.marino@jacksonville.com(904) 359-4513

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